The Scarlet Letter & A Scarlet Stigma (Illustrated Edition). Nathaniel Hawthorne
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part of "Dr. Grimshawe's Secret." In the latter we find it pictured with a Rembrandtesque depth of tone:—
"It stood in a shabby by-street and cornered on a graveyard.... Here were old brick tombs with curious sculpture on them, and quaint gravestones, some of which bore puffy little cherubs, and one or two others the effigies of eminent Puritans, wrought out to a button, a fold of the ruff, and a wrinkle of the skull-cap.... Here used to be some specimens of English garden flowers, which could not be accounted for—unless, perhaps, they had sprung from some English maiden's heart, where the intense love of those homely things and regret of them in the foreign land, had conspired together to keep their vivifying principle.... Thus rippled and surged with its hundreds of little billows the old graveyard about the house which cornered upon it; it made the street gloomy so that people did not altogether like to pass along the high wooden fence that shut it in; and the old house itself, covering ground which else had been thickly sown with bodies, partook of its dreariness, because it hardly seemed possible that the dead people should not get up out of their graves and steal in to warm themselves at this convenient fireside."
This was the place in which Hawthorne conducted his courtship; but we ought not to lose sight of the fact that, in the account above quoted, he was writing imaginatively, indulging his fancy, and dwelling on particular points for the sake of heightening the effect. It is not probable that he associated gloomy fantasies with his own experience as it progressed in these surroundings. Here as elsewhere it is important to bear in mind the distinction which Dr. Loring has made: "Throughout life," he declares, "Hawthorne led a twofold existence—a real and a supernatural. As a man, he was the realest of men. From childhood to old age, he had great physical powers. His massive head sat upon a strong and muscular neck, and his chest was broad and capacious. His strength was great; his hand and foot were large and well made.... In walking, he had a firm step and a great stride without effort. In early manhood he had abounding health, a good digestion, a hearty enjoyment of food. His excellent physical condition gave him a placid and even temper, a cheerful spirit. He was a silent man and often a moody one, but never irritable or morose; his organization was too grand for that. He was a most delightful companion. In conversation he was never controversial, never authoritative, and never absorbing. In a multitude his silence was oppressive; but with a single companion his talk flowed on sensibly, quietly, and full of wisdom and shrewdness. He discussed books with wonderful acuteness, sometimes with startling power, and with an unexpected verdict, as if Shakespeare were discussing Ben Jonson. He analyzed men, their characters and motives and capacity, with great penetration, impartially if a stranger or an enemy, with the tenderest and most touching justice if a friend. He was fond of the companionship of all who were in sympathy with this real and human side of his life." But there was another side of his being, for which we may adopt the name that Dr. Loring has given it, the "supernatural." It was this which gave him his high distinction. "When he entered upon his work as a writer, he left behind him his other and accustomed personality by which he was known in general intercourse. In this work he allowed no interference, he asked for no aid. He was shy of those whose intellectual power and literary fame might seem to give them a right to enter his sanctuary. In an assembly of illustrious authors and thinkers, he floated, reserved and silent, around the margin in the twilight of the room, and at last vanished into the outer darkness; and when he was gone, Mr. Emerson said of him: 'Hawthorne rides well his horse of the night.' The working of his mind was so sacred and mysterious to him that he was impatient of any attempt at familiarity or even intimacy with the divine power within him. His love of personal solitude was a ruling passion, his intellectual solitude was an overpowering necessity.... Hawthorne said himself that his work grew in his brain as it went on, and was beyond his control or direction, for nature was his guide.... I have often thought that he understood his own greatness so imperfectly, that he dared not expose the mystery to others, and that the sacredness of his genius was to him like the sacredness of his love."
And did not Hawthorne write to his betrothed wife?—"Lights and shadows are continually flitting across my inward sky, and I know not whence they come nor whither they go; nor do I inquire too closely into them. It is dangerous to look too minutely into such phenomena." What we may collect and set down of mere fact about his surroundings and his acts relates itself, therefore, mainly to his outwardly real existence, to the mere shell or mask of him, which was all that anybody could behold with the eyes; and as for the interior and ideal existence, it is not likely that we shall securely penetrate very far, where his own impartial and introverted gaze stopped short. It is but a rough method to infer with brusque self-confidence that we may judge from a few words here and there the whole of his thought and feeling. A fair enough notion may be formed as to the status of his post-collegiate life in Salem, from the data we have, but we can do no more than guess at its formative influence upon his genius. And I should be sorry to give an impression that because his courtship went on in the old house by the graveyard, of which he has written so soberly, there was any shadow of melancholy upon that initiatory period of a new happiness. His reflections concerning the spot had to do with his imaginative, or if one choose, his "supernatural," existence; what actually passed there had to do with the real and the personal, and with the life of the affections. We may be sure that the meeting of two such perfected spirits, so in harmony one with another, was attended with no qualified degree of joy. If it was calm and reticent, without rush of excitement or exuberant utterance, this was because movement at its acme becomes akin to rest. Let us leave his love in that sanctity which, in his own mind, it shared with his genius.
Picturesquely considered, however,—and the picturesque never goes very deep,—it is certainly interesting to observe that Hawthorne and his wife, both of Salem families, should have been born on opposite sides of the same street, within the sound of a voice; should have gone in separate directions, remaining unaware of each other's existence; and then should finally have met, when well beyond their first youth, in an old house on the borders of the ancient burial-ground in which the ancestors of both reposed, within hail of the spot where both had first seen the light.
When they became engaged, there was opposition to the match on the part of Hawthorne's family, who regarded the seemingly confirmed invalidism of Miss Peabody as an insuperable objection; but this could not be allowed to stand in the way of a union so evidently pointed out by providential circumstance and inherent adaptability in those who were to be the parties to it. The engagement was a long one; but in the interval before her marriage Miss Peabody's health materially improved.
III.
The new turn of affairs of course made Hawthorne impatient to find some employment more immediately productive than that with the pen. He was profoundly dissatisfied, also, with his elimination from the active life of the world. "I am tired of being an ornament!" he said with great emphasis, to a friend. "I want a little piece of land of my own, big enough to stand upon, big enough to be buried in. I want to have something to do with this material world." And, striking his hand vigorously upon a table that stood by: "If I could only make tables," he declared, "I should feel myself more of a man."
President Van Buren had entered on the second year of his term, and Mr. Bancroft, the historian, was Collector of the port of Boston. One evening the latter was speaking, in a circle of whig friends, of the splendid things which the democratic administration was doing for literary men.
"But there's Hawthorne," suggested Miss Elizabeth Peabody, who was present. "You've done nothing for him."
"He won't take anything," was the answer: "he has been offered places."
In fact, Hawthorne's friends in political life, Pierce and Jonathan Cilley, had urged him to enter politics; and at one time he had been offered a post in the West Indies, but refused it because he would not live in a slaveholding community.
"I happen to know," said Miss Peabody, "that he would be very glad of employment."
The result was that a small position in the Boston Custom House was soon awarded to the young author. On going down from Salem to inquire about it, he received another and better appointment as weigher and gauger. His friend Pike was installed there at the same time.